In recent years, car navigation systems or digital home appliances have been in widespread use. These products are in a situation where new models are being developed in succession in the midst of competition in product development and it is required to develop new models having new functions in the shortest possible development period. In these products, however, generally there are a lot of limits to computer resources, and therefore dedicated embedded software is often developed for each product. Accordingly, in the present circumstances, a certain amount of development period and that of development cost are needed.
Concerning this problem, there has been suggested a technology of improving the efficiency of software development by automatically generating software on the basis of information on a screen definition and a screen transition (See: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. Hei 7-219754 (1995) and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. Hei 11-45176 (1999)). According to the technology of the first patent document above, frequently used portions in a screen transition diagram are registered as components so as to improve the efficiency of the development of similar functions. According to the technology of the second patent document, after specifying a set of a plurality of screens strongly related to each other, first, a length of a screen transition necessary for switching the screens is detected. If the length is too long, a path for a screen transition having a shorter length is added. This permits a user to view the strongly-related screens sequentially with very few operations, thereby improving user-friendliness.
In many cases, the above products require complicated operations due to their advanced and sophisticated features, though they are widely used by general users. Therefore, it is expected to provide a screen transition fully adapted to a user's taste or usage. Even if, however, the entire computer resources increase due to an improvement in performance of the embedded hardware, most of them are used for new functions. Therefore, it is often the case that the function of providing a user interface (hereinafter, referred to as UI) need be performed under restrictions of the conventional resources.